Staff Planning

Many health care facilities express dissatisfaction with their current short term staff planning process. Due to complexities inherent in large facility patient flow patterns, it is extremely difficult to accurately predict unit-by-unit census levels. Without good census numbers, it is impossible to ensure adequate staff coverage.

To solve this problem, it is imperative to integrate improved patient flow modeling techniques into the staff planning and allocation process. These improvements will enable your organization to better match staff schedules to patient demand.

Based on our extensive experience in this area, we have found that discrete event simulation is the modeling technique of choice to incorporate all of the complexities, interactions and variation inherent in health care system-wide patient flow. hcProphet's Tactical Staff Simulation Module adds extensive what-if capability by simulating the flow throughout all units of the hospital to determine the expected census numbers by unit, and therefore the number of staff required. With this tool in hand, management has a virtual laboratory with which to test out the impact of various changes on overall system performance measures and ultimately, the number of staff required.

Though it necessarily deals with overall patient flow, the primary goal of the hcProphet Tactical Staff Simulation Module is to assist management in ensuring that they have the right staff, in the right unit, at the right time. Expected benefits include decreased staff costs, improved staff satisfaction and better patient coverage.